The Burial Society

by Nina Sadowsky

  Punching Delphine’s number into a phone, my stomach knots and twists. I’ve been trying to reach her unsuccessfully for hours.

  I walk to the window and stare at the street below. The few people still out and about are raucously drunk. Or clinging furtively to the shadows. My call clicks over to a recorded message. Again.

  Turning back to the monitors, I study the video feed from the exterior of the Stockholm safe house. The place is shrouded in darkness. Balint and Elena should’ve been there by now. So should Delphine.

  My ears prick at the scratchy sound of a key entering a lock. I peer intently at the screens but see nothing. Was that the sound of a doorknob turning? My heart hammers in my chest as I realize the sound is not coming from any of my monitors.

  Someone is in my apartment.

  If it’s an emissary of the Russian, the intruder will no doubt be armed. From the cache of supplies I keep under my desk, I pull a can of Mace.

  Footsteps echo on the wide plank floors. The intruder is heading toward my bedroom, assuming no doubt that I am snugly asleep, an easy target. A chill judders through me. Have they been in here before? In and gone without me ever being the wiser? Searching and planning while I was oblivious? How could I have missed that?

  I don’t think the Russian will want to kill me just yet, not until he knows Elena’s whereabouts, but I’ve seen firsthand evidence of his taste for torture. I remember the bastard’s initials branded into Elena’s flesh.

  My bare feet pad silently as I sneak down the hallway, avoiding the creaky floorboard that could give my presence away. My fingers tighten around the can of Mace.

  A dark figure is poised at the entrance to my bedroom. A man. He hesitates at the threshold; perhaps he’s seen that the bed is empty. He turns. I cover the distance to him in three swift strides. As the Mace strikes him, he screams and drops to his knees.

  Too late, I recognize the intruder. “Merde! What are you doing here?”

  Gasping with pain, my lover Gerard grunts at me in French. “I wanted to surprise you.”

  I curse myself for relenting to Gerard’s entreaties that I give him a key. I should have known better. People close to me get hurt. Sometimes it’s me that hurts them.

  “Stay there,” I command.

  Returning moments later, I kneel next to him with a bowl of cool water and a clean dishtowel. He moans as I dab his eyes and face with the wet cloth.

  “Why would you do this to me?” he whines plaintively in French. “My wife is away visiting her maman, and we haven’t seen each other—”

  “You scared me half to death,” I retort, also in French. “Sneaking into my apartment in the middle of the night! A woman has the right to protect herself.”

  Twenty minutes later, I dispatch Gerard in a taxi, instructing him to go to the nearest emergency room. I convinced him he should claim he was mugged in the street by an unseen attacker. His wife may excuse his extramarital dalliances, but under pressure, Gerard understood my preference for keeping this incident on the down low.

  I’d also surreptitiously removed my key from his ring.

  Gerard doesn’t know it yet, but I will never see him again.

  Entering my command center, I see activity on one of the monitors displaying a feed from the Stockholm safe house. I draw closer and snatch up a phone.

  On the screen, I watch as Delphine fits the key into the lock of the front door. Slings her backpack off and fishes in its depths for the ringing cell. She turns the key and muscles the door open with her shoulder, still floundering inside her backpack.

  I shift my view to the next screen over. Delphine enters the vestibule, chucks the door closed with her hip. Flips on a light. Drops the backpack so she can rummage through it with both hands.

  “Oui?” she finally answers.

  “Why are you so late?” I snap.

  “Delayed flight, boss. Some bullshit at the airport here. But B’s on his way now with the package.”

  I exhale. Things are fine.

  It’s all fine.

  Jake rushes through the streets. He bumps into a woman with a baby stroller, reaches out a hand to steady them both, and ends up copping an inadvertent feel. The woman shrieks, swats him with her purse, and unleashes a volley of outraged obscenities.

  Mumbling an apology, Jake backs away from her, turns the corner, starts to run. People brush past him in indistinct blurs of color. Voices and car horns and an unexpected refrain of classical violin compete with the roaring in his brain.

  That bitch. The way she let him spell everything out for her, all the time just waiting. Baiting her trap and preparing to pounce. It’s nobody’s business but his own why he came back to Paris a day early.

  His breath hitches in his chest. He slows. Drops his hands to his knees and gulps in air. Fuck.

  The police suspect him. They think he killed his father.

  A small girl holds a shiny gold ring up before Jake’s watering eyes.

  “You drop this, yes?” the child asks in heavily accented English, all big brown eyes and sweet, shy smile.

  Jake feels the hand snake into the back pocket of his jeans. He spins around. A man backs away, early thirties, thin and wiry, with the same big brown eyes as the girl. He clutches Jake’s wallet in one bony hand.

  Fueled by outraged instinct and pent-up, bursting feelings, Jake lunges for the guy. Momentum crashes them both to the sidewalk.

  Jake’s fists slam into the wiry man’s face. He welcomes the pop of cartilage and bone as the guy’s nose splinters.

  The skin on Jake’s knuckles splits open. His blood mingles with the blood streaming from the guy’s pulpy face.

  The girl screams, “Papa, Papa, Papa!”

  Jake rolls off the pickpocket. Staggers to his feet. Grabs his wallet from the pavement.

  The girl drops down on her knees next to her father, tears running down her terrified little face.

  “Sorry,” Jake mutters to the girl as he gets to his feet. “I’m sorry. Désolé.”

  A few people have gathered to stare, Jake realizes as he wheels about. A fat tourist with a fanny pack and socks under his sandals films Jake with his iPhone. Jake can’t have that.

  He’s running down the street with his wallet in one bloody hand and the fat tourist’s iPhone in the other before Fatso even has time to shout.

  Mallory Burrows has haunted my thoughts over the past three years.

  How could she not?

  I’ve rewritten history so that I never had that first drink, or the next one, didn’t miss that plane. Didn’t fail Mallory. Fail myself. In this daydream, I get Mallory to safety while I ferret out and neutralize her stalker. It was a simple job.

  It should’ve been a simple job.

  I’ve imagined unraveling the clues her killer left behind and then locating Crane, forcing a confession, delivering him to the police and poor Mallory’s body to the Burrows family for burial. For closure.

  I know all too well the torture of not knowing.

  Instead I fled to Paris, content to let the Burrows family suffer in ignorance. I am a coward as well as a failure.

  —

  Another favorite fantasy?

  Mallory alive, living in happy exile with her lover, Will, her disappearance and Crane’s letter taking credit for her death all an elaborate hoax executed by a desperate woman who needed to escape her old life and begin a new one. Who knows? It could be true. Haven’t I done more or less the same for numerous clients?

  Brian Burrows’s murder made that pretty fairy tale less likely.

  Now I can’t shake the feel of Natalie Burrows’s arms flung around me. Or the grief in her eyes, like looking into a mirror.

  I cost that girl her mother. Her father too, if the murders are connected.

  I study the photograph Scovell shared with me. Who is this man? Was he following Brian Burrows? Why? Did he kill him? And if he did, for what reason? Is he somehow connected to Mallory and her lover? Could it be that they are still alive
and Brian was their victim?

  How can I find this man before he kills again?

  I reach for the tequila bottle.

  I don’t like today. I don’t like delays. I don’t like mistakes. I don’t like near misses.

  I don’t like unanswered questions. I like to know.

  Most of all, I don’t like to care.

  Bad things happen when I care.

  The narrow floor lamp with its wide woven shade casts a lonely circle of light over the hotel room. It’s otherwise hushed and dim, the thick orange curtains drawn tightly against the glitter of the Parisian night. Natalie slumps in a shadowy corner, knees drawn up to her chin.

  What did Hannah and Uncle Frank discuss after she left them? What does he know that he isn’t telling her?

  Natalie could worry this bone all day.

  They don’t keep secrets from each other, she and Uncle Frank. They share secrets. Have done since Natalie was a little girl. So why’s he hiding shit from her now?

  She inhales her brother’s scent from the T-shirt she’s pulled from his messy pile. Blood from her nibbled cuticles dots the white cotton.

  Where is Jake?

  When Jake hadn’t come back in time for dinner, Uncle Frank called Aimee Martinet. Uncle Frank’s face turned white as he listened. Then he disappeared into his bedroom, banging the door shut behind him.

  Natalie tried to eavesdrop, but could only make out a low rumble. When Uncle Frank finally emerged, she badgered him. What had Martinet told him? Where was her brother?

  “All I did was report that I was concerned because Jake was late coming home.”

  “That’s not true! I saw your face.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Why are you lying to me?”

  “Natalie! That’s enough. I know you’re upset. I am too. But you know your brother. More than likely he’s just blowing off some steam.

  “Please don’t worry, Natalie,” Uncle Frank had added.

  Oh, yeah. Don’t worry. That’s a fucking excellent piece of advice.

  —

  And why did Hannah Potter seem to make Uncle Frank so anxious? What the hell was that about?

  Natalie’s dazzled by confusion. How can she be suspicious of Uncle Frank? And suspicious of what, exactly? That he’s worried? Who the fuck isn’t worried?

  Why can’t I turn my fucking brain off?

  Natalie yearns for sweet, aching relief. For numbing the pain the world throws at her by controlling the pain she inflicts on herself.

  But Uncle Frank is on high alert, watching her every move. And Natalie wants to go to college, not back into treatment.

  Dr. Bloom’s voice floats through her thoughts like a cloud. “Worry is interest paid on trouble not yet due, Natalie. Be grateful. Life is a gift. Be grateful for every day.”

  Natalie grips Jake’s T-shirt so tightly her knuckles turn as white as the fabric.

  How many fucking times did Bloom say that to her? Loser fool bitch. What if you have every right to be worried? And anyway, just what part of my fucking life is a fucking gift?

  With a jolt Natalie realizes that RISD may be in jeopardy. She knows nothing about her family’s finances. What if she can’t afford the tuition now that Dad’s dead? Will Jake know?

  Where the fuck is he?

  Natalie bangs on Uncle Frank’s door.

  His reply is a muffled groan.

  Natalie shoves open the door to find Frank instantly alert, pulling back his covers, clad in a T-shirt and boxers. “What is it?”

  “Tell me,” she demands. “What did Martinet say about Jake?”

  Uncle Frank sinks back down onto the edge of his bed.

  “All right. She said Jake wasn’t in Amsterdam when your dad was killed. He was right here, in Paris. He lied, Natalie. To the police. And to both of us.”

  I am drunk.

  Wasted.

  Not proud. Just stating facts.

  The last time I was this drunk…

  I stagger toward my bed, bottle in hand. Stub my big toe against the night table, painfully.

  Fuck!

  I slug tequila, not caring that it slops down my face and onto my shoulder, leaving a pungent snail trail of liquor.

  Tears puddle and drip messily down my cheeks. My nose is leaking. My head pounds. I feel like hell.

  I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror hung over my dresser as I collapse onto a mound of pillows. I look like hell too.

  The last time I was this drunk…

  The last time was when I missed my rendezvous with Mallory Burrows.

  I never actually met Mallory, but the widely circulated image of her face is burned into my brain. Those gray eyes. Eyes that are mirrored in the pale, drawn face of her daughter.

  I yank my soft chenille blanket up over my face. Breathe in the faint mingled scents of sweat and sex and my favorite lavender body lotion.

  I groan. I press my palms against my streaming eyes. I beg for oblivion.

  It finally comes.

  I have no idea how long I’m out.

  Dragged into consciousness by a mechanical roar of sound, my eyes still closed, I struggle to make sense of where I am.

  My body is folded and tucked into a tight space, a seatbelt fastened across my lap.

  A seatbelt?

  The sound washing over me is that of jet engines. My eyes pop open. I’m strapped into an airplane seat, but suspended midair, no plane, no pilot, just this overwhelming rush of sound, and my rigid body in a single seat, aloft in a cloudless sky.

  My mouth opens. I scream into the wind.

  And wake. Soaked with sweat, heaving with terror.

  I remember: I’ve had this dream before.

  Harsh sun streams in through the window. My mouth is ashy, my throat parched. I lurch into the bathroom. Gulp cold water from the faucet. Release a stream of pee into the toilet. It smells like tequila, as does my sweat. I need a shower, but it seems like too much effort.

  I’d been in an airport bar about to board a flight to New York when it happened. I’d been contacted by Mallory, determined her fears of a stalker were legitimate, was on my way to help. But there it was, every news channel exploding with coverage about the Farm, my former home.

  The FBI had raided the Farm.

  Have I mentioned the Farm? Probably not. There are some places and times it’s best to leave forgotten if one can. The Farm is a part of my story that I would rewrite if I could.

  Nobody loves you, Catherine, except all of us.

  —

  My father and I had left the Farm when I was only eight, and so much had happened to us both since our time there. As I sat waiting for a flight in an overlit airport bar, my years at the Farm felt foreign and distant, definitely not of this world, my world.

  Nobody loves you, Catherine, except all of us.

  Funny how that’s always in my head. Or not funny at all.

  —

  Now, as I was supposed to be heading to Mallory, a spotlight was shining on the Farm, news vans and hungry reporters circled, it was of our world, my world, after all. I missed my flight. Stayed glued to the live coverage like millions of other Americans, drawn to the tantalizing thrill of a cult of fathers’ rights activists in an armed standoff with the Feds. I drank and drank, pushing the rising tide of memories down and away.

  —

  Let’s go, Cathy. Let’s go.

  —

  After over nine hours of waiting, each minute breathlessly spun and dissected by a bevy of pundits, a hothead inside Father Karl’s compound fired the first shot. The Feds blasted the Farm to the ground. Father Karl watched twelve of his people die, including two of his own three children, before jamming his shotgun in his mouth and blowing his brains out.

  Nobody loves you, Catherine, except all of us.

  By the time I was sober, Mallory Burrows was missing and presumed dead.

  The music is rough and loud, “nouveau punk,” the shifty-eyed barker out
side had squawked. The club is packed with skinheads in leather. Blood thrums through Jake’s veins.

  Jake hears a glass shatter somewhere across the room. Pushing and shoving and shouts erupt in its wake. The violence rolls through the crowd like a wave.

  Jake’s sucked into the writhing mass on the dance floor. It’s claustrophobic. He brings his elbow up sharply, struggling to find a space to breathe. He feels the point of his elbow connect with someone’s jaw. There’s a torrent of curses in a language Jake doesn’t recognize. Then he’s hauled into the air and tossed across the room like a rag doll.

  Good, Jake thinks, as he lands hard and a boot smashes into his head, this is good.

  “Cathy.” The whisper is soft in my ear. “Let’s go, Cathy. Let’s go.”

  I struggle toward consciousness from deep slumber. Mama stands over my bed.

  “We’re having an adventure,” she whispers, gathering me up in her arms, huffing to settle me on her hip. I am five, a big girl now; Mama can hardly carry me.

  Mama hurries to pull open the front door. Daddy looms in the threshold.

  He swings me in the air. He laughs. His big hand curls around my small one.

  A squeeze. A jerk so hard it rockets pain through my shoulder.

  A flash. A bang.

  Something splatters. Pink and red and gray.

  “Hush,” Daddy commands, clamping his hand over my lips. “Be quiet, Cathy. Hush.”

  It’s only then I realize I’m screaming.

  I wake in my apartment, roused by my own shrill keening. It takes me too long to remember where I am.

  Paris.

  Home. I’m safe.

  It was a nightmare. Just a nightmare.

  I will my hammering heart to slow.

  Lift the tequila bottle to my lips.

  “Let’s go, Cathy. Let’s go.”

  The tantalizing scent of freshly brewed coffee invades the breakfast room. Frank sniffs deeply. Pours a cup from the carafe on the sideboard.